


Shore Leave

by foxsgloves



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Takes place after s2 Finale, heith is soft and warm like mash potato, sorta i guess? shiros there just roll with it, wacky space shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-03 05:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11525226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxsgloves/pseuds/foxsgloves
Summary: Hunk just wanted some bonding time with Keith and a nice trip to the grocery store.  What Hunk emphatically did not want was to get mugged, help Keith swordfight a space mob boss, get kidnapped by pirates, and lose all his food.  You know, like you do.





	1. Eat Vrepit Sal's

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! I've been kicking this around for awhile and wanted to get it out before the new season, and it just happened to be Heith week! How fortunate! I hope y'all enjoy my contribution to this, the most wholesome of VLD ships.

The planet of Nysa—a small red ball with an irregular orbit—made it clear on first landing it was not going to be Hunk’s idea of a nice time.  The raging winds threatened to batter him over at every opportunity (the slighter Pidge and Lance were not so lucky, and actually did fall over, multiple times, until Pidge figured out she could shelter behind Hunk).  The sun passed in and out from behind raging red clouds without any warning, so he went abruptly from shading his eyes to unable to see his own hand inches from his face.  Oh, and there was the band of Galra deserters turned mercenaries who decided it was a great day to try to rob the main trading outpost. 

It had been way too much to hope for that they’d have a few days of rest and respite—let alone something as wild as, say, a trip back to Earth—since Zarkon’s temporary defeat.  There were still missing teammates to recover, innocent aliens to save, and of course mercenary raids to foil.

There was one very good thing about the place that made up for the whole ordeal, though.  In orbit above the planet was Nysa Station, an independently governed, half-finished donut of space metal with a giant market in the center.  Which meant afterward, they got to eat their first filling meal in days at none other than Vrepit Sal’s The Fourth.  Sal was franchising.

He was glowing with pride to see already had a huge cluster of people milling around with numbers in hand even though it was still morning by Nysan time, at least according to Coran.

He sat back with his hands laced comfortably over his stomach after a heaping second helping of some kind of tentacle thing deep-friend in tuber breading and lard.  It was comforting to know that he could always rely on the fundamentals of cooking.  As intrinsic to the foundation of the universe as the laws of physics, even when dealing with bizarre space ingredients in a galaxy approximately 15 billion light-years from his moms’ kitchen.

“We oughta respond to distress calls more often,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “And maybe stay here for another couple of days.  You know.  Just a suggestion.”

He’d been joking, mostly, but Allura narrowed her eyes as she considered his words.  “I suppose it wouldn’t be out of the question to remain in the area for a few days to ensure the bandits don’t circle about for a second strike.  It’d defeat our whole purpose to chase them off only to let them return three days later.”

“I like the sound of that!” Lance waved his alien eating utensil, which looked like some kind of hybrid between a spoon and a knife—a spife?—for emphasis.  “Hey!  Hunk, Pidge!  We oughta have a night on the town like we always said we would back at the Garrison!  Good food, pretty alien girls…”

“Thanks for the invite,” said Keith evenly with a long sip from his glass of Nysan fruit juice—pink, sweet, and lip-puckeringly tart.  Mouth pursed, he eyed it with distrust.  Hunk pushed over a glassful of the milder thick green stuff, which was his own attempt at something like a smoothie.  Big hit with the extraterrestrials who didn’t have teeth.  Keith knocked it back with a smile of thanks.  Hunk, cheeks growing hot, turned back to his own plate rubbing at the back of his neck.

“You’re coming too, obviously!  The whole gang out for a good time together.  What do you say, Shiro?  Pidge?”

Pidge was not listening.  She had parked herself nearby in front of a rusty old hunk of a cracked arcade machine.“You guys go on ahead,” she said without tearing her eyes away from the brightly pixelated ships darting across the screen.  “I’ll catch up.”

“I meant like… five hours from now, Pidge.”

Pidge hummed an ambivalent sound and fed another handful of huge blue coins she’d bummed from Coran into the machine.

“Pidge.  You fly a _real_ spaceship like every day,” said Keith. 

“Mhm.”  She took one hand off the controls just long enough to nudge her glasses back up her nose.  “What’s your point?”  Alien script flashed across the screen in bright green with a tinkly mechanized fanfare.

Lance cracked his knuckles. “We could get a head start on scoping out the places around here.  Hunk, you in?”

Hunk cleared his throat.  “Actually, uh, I was thinking about picking up some groceries.”  They’d passed some shops that rather suspiciously resembled Earth’s express markets earlier on their way across the markets to the dining area.  Coran turned to look at him with an expression of sudden personal interest.  “There’s some stuff I wanted to try cooking in the kitchen.  Nothing fancy.  Just a change of pace.  Something that's not goo three times a day.  No offense, Coran.”

“None taken,” said Coran, with a sour expression and a tone of voice that suggested some was, in fact, taken.

Allura braced her chin on her folded hands.  “I’d like to make a visit to some of the back-alley traders about this place.  I thought I saw some old Altean ship artifacts on hand in one of the windows we passed.  Who knows what other things we might find?”  Her mouth briefly turned downward as she stared aimlessly into the past.

“That trader I visited last time had all sorts of suspicious-looking stuff,” said Coran cheerfully.  “Didn’t seem to realize its value either.  If we’re lucky we can snatch all manner of things from right under his nose for the price of a Segway ride!” 

“The last of our people and culture, reduced to a thrift-shop clearance,” said Allura grimly.

Coran tapped a finger against his mustache, his smile sliding from his place.  A gaping awkward silence ensued.  Hunk took a breath, prepared to say something soothing, although he wasn’t quite sure what it was going to be yet, when Lance said, “Maybe I’ll go with you guys.  Take in the sights, y’know?  I’m an excellent haggler, not to brag or anything.”

“Of course.  You’re welcome to,” says Coran, a little smile perking up beneath his mustache.

Keith, with a shake of his head and a firm plunk of his cup down on the table, says, “I’ll come with you, Hunk.”

“You, uh—you will?”  Hunk blinked, tugging at the one of the hanging loose ends of his headband.

“Yeah. We’re a team.  We ought to use the buddy system in a strange place like this.” He braced his hands on the table as he stood. “There’s no immediate danger, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be the longer we stick around.” 

“I wholeheartedly agree,” said Allura, clasping her hands together.  “So it’s settled.  Lance will come with Coran and I, Hunk and Keith will get groceries, and Shiro and Pidge will, ah…”

“New high score!” said Pidge, pumping her fist in the air as green alien script flashed across the screen with a tinkly mechanized fanfare.  Shiro shook his head with a smile.

“Do whatever Shiro and Pidge are going to do.  And we should expect to meet back at the Castle in… oh, about three megaticks?”

“You know, I don’t think we ever really confirmed how long a tick is,” said Hunk.

“A megatick is exactly two hours, twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds,” said Coran with an enthusiastic wave of his finger.  “Pidge and I calculated it yesterday.  Right, Pidge?”

“Breaking my concentration,” muttered Pidge as she leaned over the controls to push her face as close to the screen as possible.

“All right.”  Hunk fiddled with the yellow plastic watch he kept tucked under the cuff of his left glove.  He found it in a cereal box, just one of the hidden stash of snacks he and Lance used to keep hidden shoved into the bedframe back at Garrison Academy.  It had been meant to be short-term to replace the good one he’d broken in the pool during surprise ‘aquatic exercises,’ until he ended up in deep space without watch stores.  “Six hours it is.”

And so Keith and Hunk ended up back in the busy hallways on the way to the space-equivalent mega mart, Keith with one hand on the hilt of his sheathed bayard, Hunk shuffling along with his hands stuck in his pockets, trying to retrace their steps to the corridor of glass storefronts they’d passed through only an hour or so earlier.

Hunk had to admit that at the time he wasn’t so much concerned with mapping the area as goggling at the huge stacks of round purple fruits, seeing how close he could get to the sizzle of tentacles in some kind of vegetable oil, and thinking about the sort of things he could make with the mounds of dried root and bottles full of intimidating-looking lava-red spice.  He could probably whip up a few of the things he and his moms used to make when he went home for summer break—taro pudding, onion bread, sausage with eggs and rice.

They probably didn’t have anything like hickory smoked Spam, though.  Which was too bad, because he would probably sell one of his toes for a can of fresh hickory smoked Spam.  Also, the opportunity for a tight, breathless squeeze from either or preferably both of his mothers.  Who hopefully didn’t think he was dead.

Now there was a train of thought he was more than happy to swerve to avoid.

“You remember the way?” Keith asked over his shoulder.

“Yeah.  I’m pretty sure, anyway.  I, uh remember that sign there, and that clothes shop there, and—“ The truth was, what he’d thought was a name of one of the signs in foreign script was actually some kind of stock message repeated every few blocks, and he was having trouble distinguishing between the storefronts, all displaying the exact same set of black pants with way too many zippers.

Keith gave him a long, level look, and he ran his hands through his hair.  “I, uh… I think I got us lost.”

“It’s that way,” said Keith, with a point of his arm on a diagonal path between two of the nearly identical fashion shops.

“Sorry, man.”

“It’s all right,” said Keith, his gaze flicking from face to face of the stream of alien strangers they shared the hall with.  Nysa Station appeared to host all manner of species—it seemed any kind of interplanetary strife was outlawed in the name of capitalism. 

Hunk swallowed, realized it was unusually loud because his throat was dry, and hoped Keith didn’t notice as he thrust his sweaty hands back into his pockets.  Every time he ended up alone with Keith he turned into a knock-kneed, dorky teenager, acutely aware of every square centimeter of space he was taking up. 

He knew he wasn’t alone.  It seemed like everyone in Hunk’s class—all the ones who leaned towards guys, anyway—had big embarrassing crushes on Keith Kogane, mysterious rebel loner dropout.  It was practically a requisite for enrollment.  He liked to pretend he wasn’t one of them--after all, why would Keith Kogane look twice at him anyway?--and had insisted so when gently teased by Lance and Pidge, but the way he could feel his ears turning red whenever Keith was within five feet of physical proximity said otherwise. 

Keith flung out an arm, whacking Hunk in the sternum.  Hunk nearly stumbled as a Galra riding one of the little station segways whistled by, the wind of its passing whipping the ties of his headband against his cheeks as the driver twisted his torso around to yell what sounded like obscenities.

“Watch out,” Keith stuttered, about thirty seconds too late.  He dropped his arm from Hunk’s chest, angling his own shoulders away as he strode forward.  Hunk was probably imagining the tint of red in his cheeks.

It was time for Hunk to break the tension, and Hunk had two methods he usually fell back on to break tension: food and bad physical comedy.

“Oh no! My leg!” Hunk exclaimed, waggling his left leg back and forth.  Keith whirled back around, eyes round, his cheeks sucking in at the sight of Hunk’s empty pant cuff, until Hunk stuck his foot back out and wiggled it.  Keith let out a wheeze of surprise, throwing back his head in a genuine laugh that Hunk felt all the way through his own chest.

But the last time they’d been on a partner mission together, Keith had watched Hunk be forcibly ejected through a giant alien’s digestive tract, which pretty much ensured he would never see Hunk in anything approaching a romantic light.  He’d ruined his already minimal chances.

“Thanks for the warning,” he said with a brief squeeze of Keith’s shoulder.

Keith blinked in surprise, but didn’t protest.  After all, they’d bonded last time.  They were pals.  “We have to watch out for each other out here.”

“Y-yeah.  Teammates.  Hey, look, we’re here!”  Across the next street was a sprawl of storefronts choked with huge, bright, and sometimes flashing posters advertising deals on boxed starches and fresh meats, with crowded rows of neon boxes behind the glass walls.

As they waded into the huge crowd milling in a rough circle around the store, Keith Kogane thought about how he had made a mistake.

He didn’t like crowds.  He didn’t like the poke and brush of strange limbs over his belly and back and arms, and he didn’t like the chaos of voices all sloshing against one another and crashing over him like a rising tide.  And yet, here he was in the middle of a crowded grocery store, something he could barely manage to do back on Earth, being elbowed in the chest and edging away from an enthusiastic yellow alien bellowing about the sale on globefruit.

And Hunk hadn’t even asked him.  Hunk probably would’ve been fine to come on his own, or asked Lance or Pidge, because Lance and Pidge were his friends.  He volunteered for this, on his own, for reasons that he became increasingly more unsure of as he fell in behind Hunk, Hunk’s size making an easy wake as he edged through the crowd.

“Excuse me, sorry, excuse me.  Sorry.  Sorry, dude,” Hunk called, one hand cupped around his mouth, as he shoulder-checked his way through a thick knot of aliens.  He made his easy way from aisle to aisle, picking up bags of some grainy thing (“It’s like rice!”), a box of orange eggs laid by, according to the label, some desert lizards from the nearest moon (“It’s like eggs because it is eggs!”), and a suspicious-looking tuber that started sprouting hand-sized, silky purple leaves out of Hunk’s basket no less than ten minutes after placing it (“It’s like taro! Sort of! Actually not like taro at all but I gotta work with what I’ve got!”).

“I can carry some of that,” Keith said, scraping his bangs out of his eyes with one hand as he tried to snatch one of Hunk’s two baskets.  The extraterrestrials of Nysa apparently hadn’t invented carts yet.  Or maybe baskets were just easier for people with two sets of flexible arms.

Hunk allowed him with a duck of his head. “Thanks. Hey, um, you don’t have to follow me around the whole time. This must be getting boring for you, right?”

Keith blinked, hand still in his hair, and adrift in wondering where, exactly, he went wrong in the past hour, and also why he thought things might go differently than they had for most peer interactions he’d endured in the past seventeen years or so in his life.

He wanted Hunk to like him.  Hunk didn’t mock him when he couldn’t puzzle out how the team chants were supposed to go even though everyone picked it up right away, and he slipped him extra cookies when he stopped by the kitchen after the training sim room (the cookies were kind of soggy and nasty, but that wasn’t Hunk’s fault, he had next to nothing to work with). And he made Keith laugh.

Also, he always smelled good. Like clean laundry and some kind of herb or something, even when he just woke up or they were at the end of a space dogfight.  It was like a superpower.  Keith had spent a year living by himself in a desert shack and two years before that trapped in a dorm with hundreds of other teenagers, none of whom smelled particularly nice.

Hunk held out his hands. “I mean, I don’t want you to feel like you have to watch me ask an alien whether this fruit is a berry or a pome for an hour straight while you just hold bags.”

Keith looked down at the bag in his hands, then slung it over his shoulder. “No! It’s fine. I’m not bored. I don’t mind. I, uh, I like cooking too!”

A huge, surprised smile overtook Hunk’s face, bright as the desert sun at noon. Much also like the sun, it made Keith’s ears heat up and his neck sweat. “Really? You do?”

“Sure. I lived by myself for a year. I had to survive somehow.”

Hunk hefted his collection of twenty or so bags up on his arms to shuffle down the row towards a counter hosting a huge glass box of spit-roasting meat. “We should cook up some of this stuff together! What kind of things do you like to make?”

Keith’s mind went blank as the wind-scrubbed fields of desert. “Uh… burritos?” This was technically not a lie, as he’d eaten probably a burrito every day. Pre-packaged microwaveable burritos. Two bucks apiece.

“Burritos! I love burritos. I bet we could make some easy with all the stuff here. Are you a corn or flour tortilla man? Do you roll your own?”

“Uh. Flour? I usually get store-bought… I guess.”

“Nothing wrong with store bought,” said Hunk agreeably. “Bet we could make some good ones from scratch here, though! See if you like them better.”

“Um, I like omelets too,” sad Keith hesitantly.

“Perfect! I bet we can get some good stuff cracking with those lizard things I picked up. Cracking! Get it?” Hunk spread his hands. “Cracking?”

Keith stared, wondering how exactly it worked out that he could anticipate the near-exact angle and flight speeds of moving objects in the vacuum of space intuitively, but never got verbal jokes.  Maybe it was a Galra heritable trait.

“Omelets are always good,” Hunk continued, shuffling along with no care to how his joke had swung right past Keith’s ear. “What’s your number one favorite food?”

“Pancakes,” said Keith without hesitation. “With cinnamon sugar on top.”

Hunk stopped in his tracks and whirled around to stare Keith down. “Sugar. Sugar! That’s what we need to find.” He clapped his hands down on Keith’s shoulders. “You, Keith Kogane, are a certified genius.”

And with no attention paid to Keith’s blotchy red cheeks he turned again, baskets slapping against his hips as he strode forward with his arms swinging. “We’re going to find sugar! And then we’re going to make pancakes and they’re going to be amazing.”

Finding sugar in the chaos of Nysa Station Super Mart turned out to be less of a short excursion and more like one of Allura’s training exercises of endurance.  First of all, the word didn’t seem to translate, so the employees kept asking Hunk if what he actually wanted was somafflower oil, or strained sugbeans (neither of them had any desire to figure out what exactly a sugbean was, or why they looked like a writhing mass of eyes), or a cut of meat from an animal called a sorr, which Hunk did in fact buy wrapped in ice and grease paper after some consideration.

Just when the timer on Hunk’s watch let out a shrilling chime to inform they were almost out of megatick, they finally heard a pair of aliens further down the aisle having an argument about “sweeteners.”

The sugar was shipped in from off-world from some distant moon where sweetroot grew, and it was ludicrously expensive.  Even with a sale going on and some coupons Hunk had somehow acquired from a nice grandmotherly alien after they had a chat about their families, it still cost no less than double what Coran had given them for a grocery allowance. 

Hunk crouched, frowning, near the shelf, looking at the price sticker with a wrinkled forehead as if he hoped he could change it through sheer frustration.  Keith had wandered a bit down the aisle to see if he could find any cheaper substitutes. So both of them were taken by surprise when Hunk was crashed into from behind. 

Plastic baskets, meat, and Hunk all spilled down the aisle. Keith made a grab for the stranger’s jacket but caught only a fistful of air. Groaning, Hunk rose to his knees, scrabbling on the ground to catch a pair of rolling fruits. “My food!  Don’t worry, guys, I’ll save you!” With eyes wide in panic, he fumbled at his belt, dropping the globefruit on the floor. “My Bayard!”

Keith could still see the mugger’s back, lean and lanky, vanishing into the crowd outside the automatic doors like smoke. He thought he was fast. But Keith was faster.

Probably.

He braced both palms flat on the ground and took off like a sprint in athletics class. Ignored Hunk’s startled yell behind him. Fixed his gaze on the alien’s retreating back.

“Keith!” Hunk cried somewhere behind his left shoulder. “Wait up, man!”

Keith was faster. But the mugger knew the territory, wove in and out of the crowds like a wraith, knew which sharp turns to make that sent Keith skidding before he was able to right his course.

“Keith! Hold up!” Hunk was panting. “Come on, dude, I’m more of a distance man, I’m a terrible sprinter--”

The alien, having swiveled his blue head all the way around to catch on to the pursuit, cut left and threw himself at a wall. To Keith’s surprise he didn’t crash right into it facefirst but stuck to it by his fingertips like a gecko on a desert rock, scuttling up the wall and through a crack between ceiling tiles with ease.

He made what was probably a rude gesture down at Keith. Keith glared, fists clenched. At the mouth of the hallway, Hunk collapsed to his knees.

When Keith elbowed his way back to Hunk, he found him huddled up against the side of a sunglass kiosk, one lone grocery bag dangling from his arm, cheeks clasped between his hands. “I lost it,” he muttered down at the dirty tile. “I can’t believe I lost it.”

Keith sat beside him with his back pressed to the wall.  The crowd of alien shoppers parted around them with some curious glances.  “That’s just like me, huh?  To choke.  I always got nervous and wiffed the psychological testing at the Garrison.  Oh, and I literally choked during the pacer test.  Like I said, distance man.”  He hung his head.  “What’s Allura going to do when she finds out I went and got mugged and lost her ten thousand year old relic?  _What’s my lion going to think?_ I’ve let my buddy _down_.”

With a shrug, Keith held out the purple fruit he realized he was still clenching in his fist.  “I, uh, saved one of these.”  He broke eye contact when Hunk reached out and cupped Keith’s hands in his broad, solid ones.  “Thanks for trying to help.  I really appreciate it.”

“It was nothing,” Keith replied, too quickly, to a line of flashy necklaces on a shop cart vover Hunk’s shoulder.  He took his hand back.  “And you won’t have to tell Allura.” He pushed himself onto his knees, already trying to flag down one of the nearest kiosk salespeople.  “Because we’re going to get it back before she even knows it was gone.”

“Keith, it’s nice of you to try and help me out, but I really don’t think we’re going to be able to track down one blue dude in an entire huge mall of aliens.”  Hunk paused, eyes bugging.  “Wait.  We’re the ones from another planet.  So that makes _us_ the aliens.  Anyway.  I don’t think, we, the aliens, can track down—“

Keith broke into stride back in the direction of the Mega Mart, turning into a hallway occupied by a cluster of worn-looking thrift shops.  “Hunk.  Trust me on this one.  You’re good at cooking and calculating neutron trajectories, and I’m good at this.”

By ‘this’ he was referring to collecting shady information, which Hunk was forced to admit he was able to do with frightening efficiency.  Five minutes of pretending he was looking for contraband collector weaponry and he already had the names of some guys who ran an offworld black market trade, where they might find the sort of thing they might be looking for, ya dig.  Even Hunk forgot for a couple minutes that he and Keith wasn’t actually trying to smuggle rare interstellar weapons for their impatient boss.

“All right,” said Keith, raising his fist to knock on a rusty door in the cluster of tiny hallways somewhere behind the food court, barely wide enough for Hunk to walk without having to turn sideways and conspicuously deserted.  “Just stay back, I’ll do the talking, and if things go south we use a codeword.  Meet back here in the hallway if we get separated.”

Hunk shuffled from foot to foot.  “What’s the codeword?”

“Um.  How about ‘bomb?’” 

“But what if we need to use the codeword in a non-codeword related context?  Like, this seems like the kind of situation where we might need to be casually talking about explosives, you know?”

“Hmmm.  Okay, fine.  How about… sugar,” said Keith, thoughtlessly before he slammed his fist against the door.  Three short pauses, two long, one short again, just like the clerk back at the secondhand bootleg movie store had whispered.

The door cracked open a handful of inches and a blue alien with a long, jagged scar down her sharp nose peered through.  “Hey!  What are…” She stuck her head out further, eyes wide and curious.  “What are a couple of hairless guys like you causing a ruckus in my fine hallway in the middle of the day for?”

“Message for Sondus,” Keith shouted, flicking his sweaty bangs out of his eyes, with the same fierce-eyed and frowning determination he’d used to keep his cool through half a dozen conversations with back-alley types.  Sondus was apparently the guy to see about a thing, if the thing you wanted to see a guy about was stolen Altean-era light weaponry.

The alien woman blinked, hooking her fingers around the window ledge.  “Huh.  Okay.”  And with a series of suspicious bangs and clatters, the door unlocked with a click and hung open an inch.  “Go on down.  He’s there somewhere.  Say, what planet you boys from?”

“Andor,” said Keith, just as Hunk yelled “Tatooine,” which he quickly spun into, “the city of Tattoine, on Andor.”

“Huh.  Don’t see a lot of Andorians down this way, and Sondus never said anything about doing any business with them, neither,” she said, her eyes narrowing to slits as she dragged a seven-fingered hand down the slick metal wall.  Somewhere in the surface there must’ve been a switch, as a heavy and ancient-looking sliding door grumbled open ahead of them.

“We aren’t yet.  We were hoping to work through a partnership tonight,” said Keith, with what Hunk thought was admirable smoothness.  

“Huh.  Well, you picked a bad night, have to tell you.  He’s always in a rotten mood after he goes a few rounds in the pits.”

“The pits?” said Hunk, voice quavering, after a hard gulp.

“That’s him down there right now,” said the woman with a tilt of her head through the open doorway.  Hunk scuttled sideways to trail Keith into a wide room, dim with flashing neon lights and thick with smoke from a dozen different kinds of smoking apparatuses hanging from the lips and beaks of a heaving crowd of aliens. 

The only source of brightneess was a harsh beam in the center from a handful of creaking hanging lights.  In this light was a wire cage set into the sticky floor, and in the cage were a pair of burly aliens attempting to knock the teeth out of each other’s faces while the crowd around them screamed and wailed and heckled.

“Oh, no.”  Hunk buried his face in his hands.  “It’s a fight club.”


	2. First Rule of Fight Club

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for coming back for round two!

“Of course it’s a fight club,” Hunk moaned from between his fingers.  “It had to be something like a fight club.”

“Actually,” said a nearby tiger-striped alien sauntering by with a fizzy neon drink in hand, “it’s not a fight club at all, it’s an underground prizefighting arena.”

“Right.  Got you,” said Hunk meekly, before turning back to Keith to groan, “It had to be an underground prizefighting arena!”

“Hey, just stay calm.  We just have to wait our turn to talk to Sondus.  Let’s just head to the bar and act casual.”  The bar seemed to curl almost all the way around the fighters’ cage so everyone drinking could have a view.  Most of the stools were taken, but there were two together right between some enthusiastically yelling spectators.  One of them, a red-feathered person with a beak and tentacles, whacked Hunk in the arm as he tried to sit.  “Sorry,” said Hunk, rubbing at the beads of sweat slipping down the back of his neck.  The alien grunted.

“You heard the guard!  Sondus doesn’t look like he’s going to be doing a whole lot of talking!” said Hunk.  One of the aliens in the ring threw their blunt sword aside and with a heave of their huge, corded red arms, picked up their opponent and threw the poor sucker right into the wall with a sickening thwack.  “Is that one Sondus?  That one looks like Sondus.”

“Nah, that’s Kiora.  She’s your girl if you wanna send somebody a message.  Sondus is the little guy,” said the alien who’d whacked Hunk, helpfully.  What passed for “little” in underground prizefighting club parlance was still about the size of a city bus.  Hunk was not a small person, but he thought standing toe-to-toe he’d be looking Sondus in the chest, well below his set of five blinking golden eyes.

With a deafening siren shriek, a quartet of yellow lights above the cage arena flashed and turned red.  Kiora turned to the spectators, lifting her club-sized fists aloft with a floor-shaking roar, which was answered in kind by the crowd.  Sondus slunk out of the cage, all five eyes narrowed as he dragged his heavy clawed feet on the concrete.

“Yo, Sondus!” The helpful arm-whacker waved in his direction.  “These little guys was wanting something with you!”

As a towering alien with five eyes, a mane like a lion, and massive claws loomed over him, Hunk wondered if he was going to sweat all the way through his headband.  But Sondus swung past them entirely to cozy up to the bar and pour three brightly-colored drinks down his gullet in quick succession, in classic interstellar crime boss fashion.  Only afterward did he sway his way over to Keith and Hunk with a terse “What?”

Keith cleared his throat. “Evening, Sondus.  Someone on the grid was saying you were the man to talk to if a guy wanted to find some real collector pieces in this junk hunk—“

Sondus cut Keith short with a wave of his paw.  “I’ve got about, uh, five concussions right now so keep it simple, capisce?”

Keith’s eyebrows flattened.  “We need an old gun.”

Sondus’s grin displayed three rows of what looked something like shark teeth.  “Now we’re talking.  What kind, how many?”

“Just one, in particular.  Yellow heavy machine gun.  Folds up into a little handheld.” Keith gestured the size between his hands.  “Maybe it’s fallen into your hands.”

Sondus was already more than busy on his next drink. “Seen it?  I thought it was junk—“

“It is junk,” Hunk interjected hopefully.  “Let us take it off your hands.”

“—But some geek in the upper ward tells me it’s old Altean tech.  A museum piece.”  He eyed them with a sudden increase in suspicion.   “You boys happen to misplace it earlier?”

Hunk’s nervous silence was apparently all the answer he needed.  Sondus drummed his long, wicked claws on the bar top.  “I ain’t running a lost and found service here.  I could let it go back to you for, say, four thousand imperial credit units standard.”

“We haven’t got four thousand imperial credit units standard,” Keith and Hunk said at the same time, Keith murmuring under his breath at Hunk, Hunk announcing their broke status to the entire bar.

Sondus shrugged and turned away. “Well, then I can’t help you boys.”

“Maybe you can,” said Keith with admirably feigned confidence, leaning one elbow on the bar.  “Word on the street is that you’re a gambling man.”  Sondus huffed, his mane prickling.  “Let’s raise the stakes.  You and me in the pit.”  Hunk stared in goggle-eyed horror.  “If you win, you’ll get double your four thousand credits.  If I win, we get our gun back and walk away.”

Sondus smiled, revealing several rows of chilling shark teeth.  “I like the way you think.  It’s a deal.”

Hunk gulped.  Keith crossed his arms.  The chatty alien from earlier said, “Wow, boy, you must be outta your mind.”

“Hey, don’t mess with him!” said Hunk abruptly, straightening to his full height to look the guy in the face.  “He’s half-Galra and full… of rage.”  He deflated a little to whisper into Keith’s ear, “This is such a bad idea, please don’t do it.”

One of the other aliens at the bar top reached out to tug the end of Hunk’s jacket.  Before he could launch into full panic, she said, “Hey, aren’t you that cook from Vrepit Sal’s?”

“Um.  Yes.  That’s me.  The one and only.”

“Sick!  I loved that dish, man.  Best thing I’ve ever had in this sector.  You got a recipe?”

“Um, yeah, I can write it down for you later.  Sorry, I’m a little busy right—“ 

The chatty guy broke in again.  “You mix drinks, too?  We could use a couple new cocktails here, even if the liquor’s cheap-“

“Sugar!” Hunk exclaimed. “I think we need to have a team huddle in the corner right now! Be right back!”

Hunk put a hand on Keith’s shoulder to hustle them both over to the corner with the least amount of shady alien types and puddles of suspicious fluid, which in the current establishment meant they were still everywhere. Hunk picked his foot away from a particularly nasty spill and said, “Hey, time out. Swordfighting part lion, park shark space mob bosses at a fight club. Like, can we not?”

Under normal circumstances, Keith would have immediately straightened his back, balled his fists, and strode away towards the ring insisting he could handle it.  But Hunk’s hand was actually shaking a little where it gripped his arm.  “He may be a… lion shark whatever but his form’s not very good. And his footwork is way sloppy.”

Hunk flinched as Kiora’s next opponent made close friends with the cage wall. “I know you’re the sword guy, that’s your thing, but… shark lion mob boss! Fight club!”

Keith put up his hands. “Come on, Hunk, if I can survive the Galra initiation I can survive this.”

“You got the crap kicked out of you in that initiation! And I don’t want that to happen to you again because you were trying to be a team player and bail me out of a stupid mess that _I_ made!” Hunk aimed a thumb at his chest. “I should be the one in there about to get my skull cracked by a terrifying space mob boss!”

“Hey.” Keith gave him a quick pat on the shoulder.  “It’s not your fault, Hunk. You didn’t ask to get mugged. It happens to the best of us.” Well, never to Keith, but he’d been told that was because of his intimidating stare.  Hunk was not a guy with an intimidating stare.  Hunk had that kind of resting nice face that probably made little woodland creatures want to come be friends with him, or something.  “Besides, you’re a guy of many talents but… no offense, but dueling really isn’t one.”

“None taken! But that’s not the point!”

Keith decided to appeal to reason. “If we don’t get it back now, we’ll just have to bring Allura and the whole squad in. We're all flat broke so we’ll have to fight anyway, and he could have sold it by then.”

“That’s okay! I’ll just deal with it! Shiro didn’t have a bayard and he did just fine--”

Keith lay his own hand on top of Hunk’s. “Hunk, do you trust me?”

Hunk gulped. “Yes!”

“I can do this. Watch my back, okay?”

And with a small squeeze he strode away towards the arena, Hunk’s hand dropping away from his shoulder as Hunk gaped.

Keith had fought way more blade duels than was strictly necessary for anybody not a character in a period adventure novel. He had a System, perfected over ten years ever since the first time his foster dad took him to fencing class. Get sword, check--the fight club support staff provided him with a dull-edged practice model. Bad weight distribution, but workable. Then test it through some practice steps.

Keith wasn’t thinking about the System or practice steps. He was thinking about the way Hunk’s face dropped when he squeezed his hand. Was it dismay? Unhappy surprise? He wasn’t sure.  The one thing he was sure about was the sinking suspicion he’d messed it up somehow, the way he always did. His practice sword cut frustrated swipes through the empty air.

Sondus did not appear to have a system, unless said system was being drunk and angry. “Hope you boys got a good way to make fast cash.”

Third step was trash talk.  Keith usually preferred a stoic silence, but sometimes the situation called for a quick, snippy one-liner. “We do. It’s called winning.”

The audience went nuts. Sondus strode into the ring. Keith followed, glancing back over his shoulder to where Hunk sat at the bar.

Hunk gave him a weak watery smile and a thumbs-up. Keith turned to return the gesture as he took his place in the cage.

The crowd shrieked and thrashed again at the first clash of their blades. Keith’s quivered a bit before he was able to circle out of the blow, but he could feel the thrill of fighting surge in his blood, settling him into a dissonant calm.  He pressed forward, but Sondus brushed him off like an insect. Sondus may have had crappy footwork, but he was huge and strong and lightning-quick.  Keith had to dart back and forth around him, barely out of reach of his savage downward swings.   

Oh, and he actually knew the rules. 

The dueling club operated on some kind of weird, overcomplicated alien point system that was supposed to be more points for vitals, but in practice meant Keith only got a single point when he scraped Sondus’s ribs, but Sondus got two and a half when he grazed Keith’s shin. Keith racked up his points one at a time, scratching arms and ribs, scurrying out of the way of joint-shaking blows with an inch to spare.  But Sondus did hit him, and when he did he he hit hard, smashing Keith’s upper arm so hard he almost dropped his sword.

Hunk clenched a crumpled paper napkin in his fist at the bar. Keith was losing. He was putting up a great fight, running circles around the guy, but he was still down in points and he was going to lose and they were going to owe a million space dollars to a lion shark mob boss because Hunk had to go and get mugged and everything was terrible.

“Hey, man, how about that recipe?” asked the chatty alien, snapping Hunk out of his panic spiral.

“Oh yeah. Recipe. Sure.” He released his vicegrip on the napkin and smoothed it out on the bar top, scribbling the ingredients to his mall-caf culinary masterpiece. Out of the corner of his eye he watched Keith get docked another two points for a chest strike and flinched.

By the end of the recipe he also had tallies for every one of Keith’s failed blocks and he was gritting his teeth so hard he was about to pull a muscle in his cheek. “Hey, that’s not fair! He got him square in the chest, that should be like five points.” 

“Nah, man, highest pointage is four for the back of the neck. That’s where Nysans keep their cardiac pouch, y’see, and they made the rules. Three for the neural plexus of the inner thigh.”

Hunk froze in the middle of handing over the recipe napkin. “Wait. Does that mean Keith’s been going for the wrong spots the _whole time_?” 

“Yeah? He’s been aiming for the torso carapace. I thought he was just showing off? Thanks for the recipe. By the way, is he your boyfriend?

"No!" Hunk screeched. "He is not! Why would you think that?"

"'Cause you call him sugar," said the alien archly, and Hunk was sure he would have been better off leaving the codeword something explosive.

"You should go for it, man.  You're a catch.” The alien shrugged at Hunk’s expression of blank surprise. “You know what they say, bring home a man who can cook and you’ll never be hungry. Is that how the proverb goes?”

Hunk decided that in a different time and place he could definitely get behind a way more involved discussion of alien social norms. At a time when his non-boyfriend wasn’t getting pummeled in a fight club. He yelled Keith’s name, cupping his hands around his mouth, but Keith was never going to hear him over the drunken drone of the crowd.

“Keith! Keith, Keith, Keith!” He pushed his way through a wall of enthusiastically thrashing fight club fans, stammering a quick apology when he bumped into Kiora, who really didn’t seem to mind much. She was getting into it, and she was rooting for Keith. He found himself shoved right into the cage wall by some stray elbows. Convenient, but painful.

“Keith!”

“Sorry, kinda busy!” Keith shouted back as his sword clashed.

It was hard to yell with cage-wire pressing into his cheek, but Hunk was doing his best. “The point system’s all different! Three for inner thigh, four for back of the neck!”

Keith stopped short and almost earned himself another two-pointer to the leg. “Got it!” He gave Hunk a thumbs-up over his shoulder. Hunk returned the gesture, his hand awkwardly half stuck through the cage.

And then Keith hopped onto the side of the cage, the hilt of his sword dangling from his fingers as he swung back and forth.

“That isn’t what I meant!” Hunk cried.

Keith had set the agility course all-time records for Garrison Academy. Hunk knew what all of them were, even though he was, as he had to keep insisting, a distance man, because Lance was always quoting them in fits of frustrated pique, and Pidge used them to mock Lance mercilessly. Keith scurried up the side of the chain wall with ease. Sondus swiped at his right heel and caught it, but it was only worth one point. Apparently Nysans didn’t have Achilles heels.

As Keith hung from the top of the cage by his fingertips, Hunk had to stop from biting his own, which wasn’t hard because his arms were still crushed between the cage and his own body. Sondus swung at Keith where he dangled just out of reach, each swipe punctuated by a frustrated grunt. He stood on his padded lion-toes and inched closer and closer, the tip of his blade catching on the loose edge of Keith’s shirt, the hem of his vest.  And then Keith dropped right on top of him and smashed the hilt of his sword square into the back of Sondus’s neck, right in the cardiac pouch.

The crowd screeched in excitement. Hunk let loose a whoop of joy and tried to pump his fist. Sondus howled in rage and shoulder-checked Keith on the way down, sending him spinning onto the ground and against the cage wall with a clatter of wire.

Hunk's cheer choked into a gasp. “Excuse me, excuse me, _excuse me,_ out of the way!” Hunk threw off the grasping limbs of the crowd and stumbled through the open entrance, where he jogged around Sondus and knelt to help Keith flip onto his back. There was a nasty scrape on his cheek and another on his stomach where his shirt was riding up. “You scared me there, dude! You okay?”

“Okay? I’m great. We won.” Keith jerked his chin up at the scoreboard. Sondus 10.5. Keith 11.

“Oh, hey. We did! Well, you did.”

Keith clutched his chest with one hand. “You helped.”

“Can you sit up? Here, let me help you.” Hunk slung Keith’s arm over his shoulder. He sat, but not without a grunt of pain. “Okay, now all the way up. One, two, three, _alley-oop._ ”

Keith had to sling his other arm around Hunk’s neck to rise to his knees, and he grunted and sank into Hunk’s shoulder when his weight settled onto his right leg. “Ankle’s sprained,” he said through gritted teeth and a grimace.

“It’s cool, I’ve got you. I was always rated number one in lifeguard and rescue on account of my, quote, ‘reassuring bulk.’” Hunk braced his arm lower to take most of Keith’s weight. 

“Thanks.” Keith’s face was cherry-red, but that was probably on account of, y’know, swordfighting a giant space lion-shark at a fight club.

Together they hobbled out of the arena and back to the bar, where Sondus was emptying several more small fortunes of drinks down his gullet. All five eyes narrowed to yellow slits at their approach. “Well, well, the zugrax tuber had some fight in him after all.” 

“Zugrax’s a skinny vegetable,” said Hunk in aside, “but joke’s on him ‘cuz it’s flavorful and crunchy.” Keith chuckled, and Hunk felt the thrill vibrate all the way through his own ribs.

Sondus cracked his elbows, which was apparently a thing Nysans could do, and glanced sideways at Hunk with his three rightmost eyes. “Don’t suppose I could convince your friend to a rematch for double?” 

Hunk shivered. “No thanks. I’m all intimidating size but no killer instinct.”

Hunk and Keith looked at Sondus expectantly. Sondus stared them down with two and a half eyes each. “C’mon, don’t be a sore loser,” said the bartender cheerfully, juggling a mixer with her third arm. “I don’t wanna have to bring Kiora over here.” Kiora looked plenty ready to bring herself over, baring her long fangs in Sondus’s direction from across the room.

Sondus grunted, huffed, and finally presented Hunk’s bayard, intact. Hunk scooped it up with his free hand, hugging it to his side. “Bayard! I missed you, buddy!” 

“Best watch it close, or you might find yourselves back here again,” said Sondus.

The bartender said, “Don’t be a jerk.”

Hunk heaved a sigh of relief and straightened up, shoving his bayard into his belt. “Keith, do you suppose maybe we ought to blow this popsicle stand?” Keith stared blankly up at him, a rivulet of sweat running down his forehead and dripping from his bangs. “Let’s get out of here.”

Keith tightened his grip around Hunk’s neck. “Lead the way.”

The door guard gave them a jaunty salute as they passed back through the hallway and into the blessedly lit and comparatively quiet back halls of the space mall. “Thanks again for your help. You really did me a solid back there. I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me anything. We’re… teammates, right? And we’re bonding. You even cradled me in your arms.”

Hunk threw back his head and laughed, almost losing his grip. “See? Galra Keith still funnier than old Keith.” He let Keith readjust his grip on the neck of his vest and veered straight into awkward babbling territory. “Why is it that whenever we hang out it’s something like an alien’s anus or fight clubs? Why can’t we ever have nice things?”

“I don’t know,” Keith grunted, occupied with the difficulty of shuffling along without tipping them both over. “Guess we should… try again?”

“When we get back to the ship, I’m making you as many pancakes as you can eat. How’s that sound?”

“It’s a date,” said Keith, then stopped short, a little frown pinching his mouth. Hunk looked away, frantically running down a list of jokes he could use to defuse the situation and let Keith off the hook, because no way could Keith have meant that in the literal sense.

Because Keith was looking at Hunk, and Hunk was pointedly not looking at Keith and up into the angle between the wall and ceiling instead, neither of them were looking at the end of the hallway, until Hunk flinched at the sound of a plasma pistol very dramatically being cocked into firing mode with a high-pitched whine. Then they were both looking back over their shoulder at the fight club bouncer, the one with the long scar on her nose, who was adjusting the loop of her vest with her spare hand. The other held the plasma pistol.

“Nothing personal, boys,” she said, flicking the mouth of the gun, “but I’m gonna have to ask you to drop your weapons and put your hands on your head.”

Well. That was just great.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE PREDICAMENTS KEEP COMING
> 
> WHY DON'T I LET THESE SOFT BOYS REST


	3. Nah It's Cool I Didn't Need to Go A Day Without Being Kidnapped By Pirates or Anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! Thanks for joining me for another episode of Soft Boys In Trouble And Ignoring Their Feelings! And thank you to my lovely commenters, you make my day every time!

Their space pirate kidnappers of course had a van, a transport vehicle for one of the stores they’d passed through earlier. Keith braced a hand against a box of flimsy shirts with too many zippers as they banked into a wide right turn. Three rights, a left, a slight descent, another right.

They had company--one of the bouncer’s two heavyweight friends who’d shown up shortly right after she pulled her gun. The friend sat stoically with her hands in her lap, barely rocking back and forth with the jerking of the van. Her big fists bore distinct calluses that announced she hit people and things very hard on a regular basis.  Oh, and the bouncer had taken his bayard along with Hunk’s, so that was just great.

He was ready to hit somebody.

The only reason he didn’t was that his hands, like Hunk’s, were cuffed behind his back. Also, Hunk kept giving him long, panicked glances from the opposite bench, round-eyed and mouth stretched into a frown. Even Keith knew how to interpret that as “Please, please, please don’t shoulder check the space pirate.”

Keith did not shoulder check the space pirate. Yet.

The van slowed and declined, its engines growling, and finally dropped three feet with a tooth-cracking pop. The bouncer and the other tough stopped the loud argument they’d been having apparently concerning their cousin Thorzell, who had a trihexanol problem, whatever that was. The door cracked open and they were hustled out with help from the big cousin. Keith grit his teeth as his weight crushed his injured ankle.

They were in the under-construction new wing of the station, the one they’d spotted earlier on the trip in. Under flickering exposed light fixtures a few warning signs--they had Galra translations along the bottom--announced that _construction was halted until further notice_ and _unstable flooring ahead_ and _turn back now._ A few glass storefronts opened onto shadowed rooms. Further down the hall, the floor fell away into a yawning black hole of empty shell.

“Move along, boys, thank you kindly.” The bouncer flashed her pistol again. Keith looked at a warning sign in the distance, squared his shoulders, and took careful steps, but he couldn’t help hissing through his clenched teeth by the third step.

“Hey, his ankle’s hurt!” Hunk caught up to Keith and bent down a little to offer his shoulder. Keith leaned against it with a grunt of thanks.

“If you uncuff us,” said Hunk to the bouncer, “I can help him walk.”

The bouncer blew a frustrated sound through her lips. “Nice try. No.”

 They shuffled along towards the thickest shadows, Keith pressing against Hunk’s shoulder as a crutch. “You going to be okay, man?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Keith grunted. As he shifted his weight, something round and hard in the pocket of Hunk’s vest dug into his arm. “Except the globefruit is--the globefruit!”

“Hey! Cool it with the whispering!” snapped the bouncer.

A little frown pinched Hunk’s forehead beneath his headband. “How good’s your throwing arm?”

“Good enough. But I’m gonna need help with the getaway.”

“You boys got something you want to share with the class?” Hunk gave Keith a silent nod under the bouncer’s frigid stare. The fruit bruised Keith’s tricep all the way to the end of the hall, where a pair of smaller, mobile shadows peeled off the walls. As they entered the circle of light from the bulky cousin’s lantern the family resemblance was obvious.

“Hey, Tern’s back!” To Keith’s uncomfortable surprise, one of them was a kid. A freckled little alien kid. He didn’t want to throw a fruit with concussive force at a kid.

The kid gazed up at them with round eyes and a slack jaw. “Are they really Paladins of Voltron?”

“The ones and only!” said Hunk with a little wave. The kid looked up at him with sparkling eyes.

Tern scoffed. “Yeah, squirt, and I’m not gonna uncuff them so you can get an autograph.” The kid actually scrunched their face up in disappointment. Tern leaned down to ruffle their head-fur. “I’ll do you one better. You can hand ‘em off to Internal Security.”

“You already make the call?” asked the burly cousin.

The space pirate with the child gave a hard nod. “On their way to make the exchange in three megaticks.”

“Three hundred million imperial standard credits. That’s what your bounty’s worth, in case you were wondering.” The bouncer swung her lantern in a lazy circle. “Each.”

“We’re worth so many Bayards,” Hunk whispered in awe.

“And three million impies can do a whole lot for a few down-on-their-luck space pirates. So you can understand that it ain’t personal. We’ll just have a nice quick stay in our luxury accommodations here, and then we’ll send you on your way.”

Keith glared. Hunk said, “No offense taken.”

The luxury accomodation was a back room that looked like it was going to be a storage room to hold spare zippered shirts at one point, but now held four chairs, a flickering lantern, and a sturdy lock that took two keys. The bouncer--Tern--unlocked their cuffs, but kept her seventh finger on the pistol’s trigger as she backed out of the room.

Hunk sighed and scrubbed at his forehead with his free hand. “I’m so disappointed in myself, I didn’t even get a shady vibe from her! I mean I did, because shady fight club bouncer, but not _this_ kind of shady!” He lowered Keith down into one of the chairs. “How’re you doing?”

Hunk made a little grunt of surprise as Keith dug the fruit out of his vest. “I’m fine. More than fine. I’m about to start banging a chair against the wall, and when she comes back I throw the fruit and then we run.”

Hunk tapped his index fingers together close to his chest. “Right _now?_ Are you sure, shouldn’t we take some time to--”

Keith scrabbled for one of the chairs. “We don’t have any time! We’ve only got three megaticks before an entire troop is breathing down our necks and I forget how long a megatick is!”

“Okay, okay, so we throw the fruit and we run, I’ll have to help you, and then where do we go?”

Keith flung out his arms. “Further into the construction zone!”

Hunk fumbled with his headband. “But it’s unstable down there! Maybe we should go the other way instead!”

“That’s the way with all the space pirates! We don’t have time for this!” Keith could feel his voice rising as if from far away, his anger coming over him like a red-washed tide.  He didn't want to lose it and yell at Hunk and have Hunk make that saggy frowning face. But the more he tried to bring it under control the more it slipped out of his hands, like squeezing a bar of wet soap.  Which kept falling right onto his foot. “We can’t just sit here and plan it all out, we have to move!”

Hunk took a step back, raising his hands. “I know, I know, I hear you. But I’m a plans guy. I need to know what I’m doing or I get anxious. Um, more anxious. But I’m trying to get better at spontaneous adventure stuff! I’m good now, I know what we’re gonna do and where we’re gonna go.”

Keith lowered his shoulders, sucking in a deep breath. _Patience yields focus, Keith. And not making your ~~crush~~ ~~friend~~ teammate have a panic_ _attack.  
_

“Are you good?" asked Hunk. "Are we good?”

Keith sighed. “Yeah. Come over here, I need your reassuring bulk. It’s an important part of the plan.”

As Hunk guided Keith's hands to a firm grip on his shoulders, a heavy thud landed three times on the door. “Hey! Pipe down in there.”

Hunk looked down at Keith sideways. “I just got a spontaneous idea.” He blew out his cheeks and bellowed, “You’re just the worst! I hate you and your stupid pretty-boy face!” He gestured to Keith and whispered, “Now you.”

The thud landed again. “Ugh! Do you want a snack or something? Will you shut up if I give you a snack?”

“A snack would be nice!” Hunk hollered back. "We get loud when we're hangry!"

Keith was so involved with trying to pick a good insult that he forgot to ask if Hunk really thought he had a pretty boy face, stupid or otherwise. “ _What_ did you just say to me?”

“I said you have a stupid face!”

Keith spluttered. “Well, your muscles are too hard! And you’re… so nice it nauseates me!”

“Why, how dare you, sir! Don’t make me come over there and swing my fisticuffs!” Hunk dropped his voice to a whisper. “That’s… that’s, um, a good start, but you have to get meaner! We’re fighting.”

Keith shouted at the full reach of his lungs, “You don’t belong on the team! You don’t contribute anything!”

Hunk froze. “That was way harsh, dude,” he mumbled. Keith’s hand tightened around the neck of Hunk’s vest, but he looked up to see Hunk was grinning. “Great! Now I’m gonna pretend to hit you with the chair!”

He smacked the chair against the wall with a resounding clang, and two seconds too late Keith managed to muster up a strangled half-shout. “Good effort, good effort!”

“Fine, I’m coming in there with some cheese squiggles, maybe that’ll cool you two off--” Tern came in pistol-first, but that meant she didn’t see Keith wind up to knock it out of her hand with the globefruit.

Purple juice splattered on the floor, followed by the bag of cheese squiggles. Keith kicked the gun with his good foot and it skittered away into the darkness. Hunk wrapped an arm around Keith’s waist and they half-ran, half-limped out of the storage room.

Keith twisted around to look over his shoulder. Tern was barking into some communication device she’d snatched off her belt. “I need backup, guys, the money’s loose!” She made a dive for the patch of darkness where her gun had vanished.

The crash of running footsteps echoed up the hallway. Then yelling, closing in fast. “Whoops!” Hunk swung his arm under Keith’s knees and hauled him into a carry. “Sorry, sorry! We have to move faster!”

Something squat and small was blocking the center of the hallway ahead.  Hunk screeched to a stop just feet away from the freckled little space pirate kid. Hunk gasped. Keith stared.  The kid gazed up at them with huge starry eyes, held a finger across their lips, and offered a scrap of loose paper.

"What do you want?" Keith whispered.

"I think they want... our autographs," said Hunk as the child silently mimed scribbling on the paper.

Two scribbled signatures later, the kid scuttled aside, beaming, with a whisper of "Thanks!" before stuffing the goods in their jacket and skipping back into the light.  "Hey, Auntie Tern, they want back towards the entrance!"

Keith clung to Hunk’s vest as he hustled them down a side hallway. The little pools of light from the flickering fixtures shrank with each stride, and one of the pirates were clattering around somewhere close behind them. 

“Go right! Go right!” Keith urged as they breezed past a series of empty alleys.

“Stop backseat driving! I’m doing my best here!” Hunk huffed. “We’re not gonna make it, we’re not gonna--”

There was no floor. Hunk skidded to a stop a handspan away from a sheer drop where the uneven floor tile vanished into empty air. “We’re _really_ not gonna make--wait. Hold on.” Hunk squinted into the darkness to their side.  From somewhere behind them a pirate shouted, and it sounded like the big one.

Hunk reached out his free hand and braced it against the sheer wall to their right. "Hunk, we gotta turn around, this is no time to commune with the wall!"

Hunk squared his shoulders. “Keith, you’re gonna need to hang tight.”

“Hang tight like wait, or hang tight like physically--”

Hunk launched them both off the edge of the platform, slamming into a squat against the nearest wall.

The wall was curved. Steep, but not much more than the Garrison obstacle course slide. Hunk let go of Keith with one hand to brace against it and shove them further and further to the right, then thrust that arm above his head with a cheer.

Keith found himself laughing in surprise. Hunk’s chest shook beneath him with his own big belly whoops.

They slowed to a stop as the angle flattened like the bottom of a huge bowl, eventually skidding up against a featureless, hastily-built wall. Hunk leaned against it for support. Keith gripped the back of his neck to keep from sliding down his chest and he startled back to attention. 

“Whoops! Didn’t mean to just… scoop you up like that! Oh no, gravity is increasing! I can’t keep myself up! I’m siiiiiinking!” 

He knelt into a crouch, draping a hand against his headband in an exaggerated swoon, and allowing Keith to chuckle and brace his feet back on solid floor. 

Keith had to wipe sweat from his own sticky bangs. “Okay, what _was_ that?”

“Told you the floor was unstable,” said Hunk as he brushed dust off his shirt, even though he was smiling.

“No, how’d you know we could jump off the edge and not die?” Keith shaded his eyes to look back up into the gloom above.  A cluster of little pinpricks of light drifted around, but didn’t get any larger, and the pirates’ yells were as distant as through deep water.

“Oh, uh,” Hunk wrung his hands together, “I could see the wall slanting, and the mall station’s an ellipsoid, you know, we saw it on our way in… but a really shallow ellipsoid with the artificial gravity directed towards a set point on the short axis, and the angle was already good enough that our friction would keep us at safe enough speeds if we slid into something--”

Keith held up a hand. “You engineered us a slide?”

Hunk tilted his head. “Um. Sort of?”

“There’s that big brain of yours.” Hunk’s little frown flipped over into a little grin as Keith gave him a slap on the arm. He flinched a little too. Slap must’ve been too hard.  Keith shook out his hand with a frustrated grunt.

Rubbing at his arm, Hunk said, “I have an idea for how we can get out of here, too. The station has to continuously pump breathable air in and out of the whole building, right? Including here, since this area's part of the vacuum seal. So there must be vents leading to and from the atmosphere control center.” He made a motion with his hand. “You know. Crawling through air ducts, spy-style.”

It didn’t take long to pry the cover off the closest vent. But half an hour of scuffling up the incline of a space air duct, Hunk was feeling pretty resentful of any movie that made it look like a cool secret agent thing to do, instead of something that just chafed your knees and elbows until they scraped and burned. He was going to need to borrow a whole tube of Lance's aloe lotion.

The vent was just wide enough for them to crawl along shoulder to shoulder, but not wide enough to keep said shoulders from bumping together every so often. Keith peered at one of the stickers on the duct side in the frosty light of their stolen lantern. “I think we’re going the right way. Or at least it says ‘center’ and an arrow pointing to the other end.”

“Huh, really? How can you tell?”

“There’s a Galra translation on the signs,” Keith said, and felt his neck grow hot under Hunk’s open stare. “I’m learning how to read it,” he said, defensively.

“Handy.” An awkward silence filled the long length of duct before them. “Are you teaching yourself or…”

“Yeah. Pidge got me some discounted phrasebooks off the nearest station’s intranet.”

“And by discounted, do you mean stole?” 

“You got it.”

“That’s neat. Connecting with your roots and stuff.” Hunk drummed his fingers against the duct floor, and an echo rippled into the distance. “So, uh, while we’re talking about our feelings and stuff… are the Galra jokes good, or not good? I’m going for a 'making the whole situation feel average through humor' vibe, but I don’t want to make you feel bad.”

Keith paused in the middle of sliding his injured ankle up the incline. “No, uh, I like the jokes. They do make the situation feel more average. Through humor” said Keith hesitantly, then cleared his throat. “I, Galra Keith, will stay friends and teammates with you as long as you keep making the jokes.”

Hunk let out a relieved laugh and patted Keith’s shoulder.  “Great! Because I love cats, I’ve always loved cats.” Hunk promptly wished he could curl up in the duct and live there forever. He almost wished Pidge and Lance were present to mock him, as he so clearly deserved it.   
  
Keith gave him a confused sideways glance.  “I don’t get it.”

“You know, because the Galra are kinda… cat-like?  Never mind, definitely not my best material.  But I, Tsuyoshi Garrett, promise to keep making better jokes.”

Keith stopped short. “Who the heck is _Tsuyoshi_?”

“Me? It’s my name?” 

Keith’s eyebrows shot upward. “You mean Hunk’s _not your real name?”_

Hunk chuckled. “Nah, dude. Did you think it was?”

Keith made a half-shrug in the cramped confines of the duct. “Yes? I mean, it was on the Garrison official records.”

“I thought you didn’t remember me from the Garrison.”

Keith’s ears flushed pink. “I saw the exam records. Hunk Garrett always had the top chemistry score.”

Hunk was glad the poor lantern-light probably hid his flinch of self-conscious embarrassment.  Probably.  “Hah, yeah, I respond better to Hunk. I’ve been about the size of a fridge since I was six and it kinda stuck.” 

As Keith started forward again, he just happened to press his hand down on top of Hunk’s. Hunk looked sideways. Keith looked sideways. Hunk broke eye contact and shifted his hand before Keith could feel the rapid patter of his pulse.

_Alien anuses_ , he repeated to himself. _Explosive digestive issues. He’s never going to see you in a romantic light, not that he would anyway._

_Alien anuses._

Keith interrupted Hunk’s internal monologue in the middle of its third round. “Did you… remember me from the Garrison?” 

“Yeah. Um, sure I did. We didn’t have any classes together…” He used to stare at the back of Keith’s head during lunch period, wondering just how Keith was doing the impossible nad making a mullet look nice. This did not seem like necessary information to share. “But I heard Lance got mad about your scoring record like every day. And Pidge wasn't great with names but I'm pretty sure she thought you were cool. She’s got a healthy respect for disrespecting authority. Even if she called you "that guy with the thing for Shiro" for awhile."

He clamped his mouth shut.  He really needed to tamp down this whole nervous incoherent babbling thing.

"A thing? What do you mean, a thing?"

"You know, like a _thing_ -thing."

"Why do you just keep repeating the word thing but in slightly different ways."

"A thing-thing like a crush, okay?" Hunk was definitely going to dwell in this duct forever. It was his new home.

Keith frowned, eyebrows pinched together. “I do not have a thing or a crush on Shiro.” 

“Oh, so it’s more like a brotherly devotion type thing.” Hunk said lightly.  “That’s cool.”

“I… guess?” Keith’s brows quirked. “What about you and that rock girl you admire very much? The one Lance is always bothering you about.”

“I _donot_ haveacrushonShay,” Hunk exhaled, all a single word, and heaved a breath when he was finished. “I don’t. I mean, she's really cool and important to me, just not in that way. I know when people deny it too hard like that its ‘cause they usually do, but I just say it that way ‘cause it’s like a tradition for Lance to tease me nonstop. Like, seriously, nonstop. I made the mistake of telling him I liked a classmate my first week at the Garrison and he didn’t stop guessing people for the entire year.”

The crush in question was, of course, currently bumping shoulders with him in a ventilation duct. 

Keith’s brow furrowed. “Did he ever guess right?”

“No. Neither did, uh, the guy. You know, the crush guy.”

Keith paused in the middle of his forward crawl to glance over at Hunk, eyebrows raised. Hunk scooted the lantern over to his side so Keith could see less of his darkening cheeks.

There was a dim blue-gray light leaking down the end of the duct, mercifully sparing Hunk from any more of that line of questioning. “The exit! We made it!”

He rammed the exit grate with his shoulder, and it creaked open and clattered onto a metal catwalk a few feet below that held steady when he swung down onto it. He offered up both hands to help Keith down.

They were in a vast cylindrical chamber with a ceiling that soared into the distance--it must have covered most of the height of the station--with walls plastered in duct vents and maintenance catwalks. In the center of the room what must’ve been the oxygenator beam whirred and whistled inside a massive glass tube, flashing dull, frosty light.

Across the chamber a few catwalks below, a maintenance worker in a blue vest was tweaking something in a wider duct, their back still turned, occupied with the little portable music device leaking an interstellar slow jam through their headphones.

Next to the maintenance worker was a bulky, worn hoverbike with a peeling red stripe down the side. Hunk sighed in relief. Keith, eyes shining, looked up at Hunk with a wide grin as he popped his knuckles.

Now things were finally starting to look up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A better end than last chapter's!
> 
> Hunk's "I love cats" line is of course a reference to the Wachowski sisters' iconic cinematic achievement JUPITER ASCENDING, the most important film of 2015.


	4. Fast and Furious: Nysa Station Drift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everybody! Thanks for coming back! We've got a double update today, last chapter and then the epilogue!

The hoverbike roared to life with a gnashing, rusty chainsaw racket under Keith’s hand. It was less of a bike and more of a bulky, ancient imitation of an all-terrain vehicle, but still.

“Are you _sure_ you’re good to drive?” asked Hunk for the fifth time, peering over Keith’s shoulder at the controls. 

“I’m good,” Keith answered for the fifth time, and bit down the accelerator. The thing jerked forward with a gasp. 

“Sorry about this!” Hunk shouted through cupped hands at the maintenance worker as they pulled away. The apology was apparently swallowed, like everything else, by the smooth space jams in their headset.

Keith guided the bike into a downward spiral towards the exit that on anything with an antigrav core younger than the Zarkon himself would’ve been smooth. He could practically feel Hunk’s fingers digging into the seat behind him.

“Listen,” he called over his shoulder, “This thing’s gonna need some help. I’m gonna need you to lean into the turns, okay, big guy?”

“O-okay!” Hunk shouted, gripping Keith’s shoulder during a particularly rough buck as Keith joined a trickle of traffic heading towards the station center. Keith lost his grip on the left handle of the steering handle and almost sent them veering into a sheer wall.

A crimson-feathered cart driver made what was probably a rude gesture as he sped around them. Today was the day for him to make all the cart drivers angry.  He shrugged and took the next turn in the direction of the hub. “Hunk, I’m gonna need you to go right!”

“Got it!” Hunk shifted his reassuring bulk and the bike rolled into a neat turn. The shops on the outskirts of the market sector flashed by, a dizzying jumble of electric blue signs, and then the huge pastel sale posters of the mega mart where they’d hunted so long for sugar.  He thought he could still see some shopworkers in smocks cleaning up spilled fruit through the glass doors.

“Where do you think we’ll find the others?” asked Hunk.  “They were going bargain hunting, right?”

“On it.” Keith swerved towards the swap shops. The bike moaned in complaint. And from somewhere behind them, a much more impressive engine coughed.

“No, no no no,” Hunk moaned. Keith felt Hunk twist against his back to look behind them. He clamped down on the handlebars.

“Our friends are back?"

“The space pirates are multiplying!” They had not one but two bulky vans and a much sleeker hoverbike, a new number with a slim nose and glossy coat of red paint that made him sick with jealousy. Who else drove the bike but Tern, the edge of her vest fluttering as she picked up speed.

"Go left! Go left!” cried Hunk.

“Who’s backseat driving now?” Keith called over his shoulder. “Lean!”

They swerved into an alley as one of the vans was joined by a bright yellow cart manned by another pair of enthusiastically yelling pirates, one flapping a little flag with what looked like an alien octopus skeleton on it, or something. Tern's big cousin shouted something about ceasing and desisting and putting their hands or tentacles or other cephalad appendages in the air.

"Can they do this? I mean, just start a car chase through a public station like this?"

"They're pirates, they do what they want!" Keith narrowly avoided a few panicked pedestrians before two of them started yelling and flailing their arms around their heads.

“Pidge and Lance! Lance and Pidge!” Hunk tugged at the loose fabric of Keith’s sleeve. “Let’s go back around!”

They twirled in a square around a block of shops, bouncing vegetables off a stacked display to speed back past the security caravan. One of the vans veered to a crashing halt trying to avoid the squash avalanche, but it was replaced within seconds by a pair of disgruntled pirates sporting helmets painted with red slashes, scuttling along in a hoverbike with a sidecar.

The one in the sidecar was trying to balance a bowl of friend tentacles. "Thank you kindly!" said Hunk as he snatched one from a hand as they sped by. "Want one?" He held a piece up over Keith's shoulder.

Keith sighed. "... Yeah." He snatched the strip and crunched it down, squinting at Tern around the next distant corner. Her scarred cheek was pulled down in a glare as she barked something into a communicator clipped to the neck of her shirt. "She's calling in all the reinforcements."

"Does she know every pirate on this station? Are they all in the same club or something?"

"Hold on tight, coming in for a landing," Keith yelled as he brought the bike to a screeching, sparking stop, almost bowling over Lance and Pidge while they ran to catch up and climb on.

“Can’t leave you guys unsupervised for three ticks, huh?” Pidge had her arms full of a hunk of tech that resembled a giant gray brick covered in blinking yellow lights. It completely weighed down the right side of the bike.

“We thought you were lost!” Lance yelled as he slung a leg over the seat, forcing Hunk to scoot forward and practically rest his chin on Keith’s head.

Which he did, gently bonking Keith’s forehead as he leaned back. “What’s up?" 

Keith refused to flush. It was not the time. “Pidge, you gotta move your junk or lose the ballast,” he shouted as he built into an acceleration that made the engine scream in protest.

“Excuse you! That’s our gently used earth-tech compatible SL-167 Quasar Visual System X, and it only took us four hours to find! Show it some respect!” Lance took one half of the box from Pidge, hauling it  over the seat of the bike but somehow making the weight distribution worse.  The bike’s nose wobbled back and forth.

Hunk tried to twist around to help him without elbowing Keith between the shoulder blades. “Where’s everyone else?”

“Mom and Dad went to look for you! Last time we checked they were trying to scare some space pirate into going afer you," said Lance, fumbling with the edge of the space TV.

“Looks like the pirates already found you,” added Pidge with a dry smirk.

“Who are Mom and Dad?” 

Lance let go of a corner of the box to wave a hand. “Shiro and Allura, keep up! And Coran’s around here somewhere, he was asking around at the grocery store--where have you guys been?” 

“Yeah, what’s with the car chase?” Pidge clenched her teeth as she tried to balance the full weight of the thing.

Hunk’s teeth clattered together as the bike scraped over a bump. “Um, so, short version--”

“Right!” shouted Keith. Hunk leaned. Lance and Pidge caught on fast and joined him.

“Short version, I got mugged at a grocery store, they stole my bayard, Keith fought a guy at a fight club to get it back for me, we both got kidnapped by space pirates who then took both our bayards and wanted to turn us over to the empire and we had to crawl through air ducts to escape and now here we are.”

Pidge pushed her glasses up her nose with an air of something between admiration and concern. Lance said, “No fair, I wanna come with you guys next time!”

The vans and sidecar were gaining, not to mention Tern's newer, sleeker, faster bike kept trying to pass, and would have been able to multiple times if Keith wasn’t bouncing off the station walls like a pinball cutting her off. And the market district was coming to an end, a vast wall of residential blocks rising in the distance.

Hunk shook Keith’s shoulder. “I know!” Keith yelled, swerving back and forth looking for an alley to swing into. All the while what did, in fact, look the entire space pirate population of Nysa station kept popping out from around sunglass stands and cheap shirts, driving food carts and cobbled hoverbikes and one acid hover-segway.

Lance was yelling something into Pidge's communicator--either she'd ripped the one out of her paladin suit or hacked a new one, impossible to say--and Hunk thought he heard Shiro on the other line. Pidge squinted behind them, almost letting her end of TV-thing slide off the bike. “They still have your bayards, you said?”

“Yeah. She’s got them. The lady with the big scar.” He glanced at Pidge’s own bayard clipped to her belt. “You think you could snatch it for us?”

Pidge rapped a finger against its handle. “I’m your girl.”

Hunk beamed. “Yeah! Yeah! Hey, Keith!” He tapped Keith on the shoulder. “We have an idea! Can you bring us to a stop at the end of the road?”

Keith didn’t even flinch. “On it. Keep leaning left.” And then he coiled the bike into one of those flashy spinning stops that ended with the bike facing in the opposite direction, all four of them thrown together in a jumble. Lance groaned in envy.

“Okay, when Pidge gives the signal, can you gun it?” Keith nodded at Hunk.

“Hands, tentacles, or cephalad appendages in the air!” shouted the cousin again as the pirates all came to a stop in a chorus of screaming brakes. The Segway rammed right into a food truck and the sidecar flipped over Tern's bike right after she dismounted. She grunted in disgust. 

Hunk raised his hands. So did Keith, but though he kept them hovering over the handlebar as close as possible. 

A gaggle of pirates approached, Tern in the lead, yanking out her pistol. Her vest flared, Hunk and Keith’s bayards flashing from a pair of straps on the right hip of her belt.

Pidge’s glasses flashed as she fiddled with them to line up her shot. Tern helped her out by striding closer with her entire pirate posse in tow. "I thought you said there were only two,” the pirate from the segway said with three squinting eyes.

“I did. And if my eyes are working they’ve picked up two of their paladin pals. Pal-adins!”

“Ugh, that was _good_ ,” Hunk muttered. Keith snorted. 

“She’s right,” said the sidecar pirate. “I recognize their mugs from the wanted order.”

“Look at that! I just got us twelve million impies.” Tern stretched her arms above her head. “Maybe they’ll give us a bonus if we deliver the whole set!”

Pidge let loose her grappling hook, the claw clenching around Tern’s belt buckle, which easily yanked loose. “So long, suckers!” she cried as the belt landed in her hand.

That was apparently the signal. Keith gunned it. The bike shot forward with a jolt, knocking Hunk’s chin against the back of Keith’s skull. Keith didn’t let up on the choke. The red doors of the residential blocks blurred into a smear as Keith took the first turn he saw, Hunk mirroring the direction without the need to shout.

“Why do we always end up flying out of space stations in a car chase? Or cow chase?” Hunk moaned.

“At least we have an actual vehicle this time,” said Pidge dryly before fiddling with her communicator and muttering something over what sounded like Shiro and Allura, both yelling. “We got directions. Coran’s getting the castle ready for takeoff. Take the first turn past the big fountain-- _the big fountain_ \--”

Keith shook his head. “He can’t hear you, Pidge!” Hunk yelled.

“Ugh, here,” she said, unclipping the speaker and thrusting it into Hunk’s fist. He held it next to Keith’s ear and tried not to get thrashed off the seat for the fiftieth time.

Just when he thought his poor empty stomach couldn’t take any more shaking, the bike leveled out onto the landing docks, a straightaway towards the open gangplank of the castle. Coran stood at the end, waving his arms above his head.

“Everybody hold on tight!” Keith braked, and though the bike protested with a screech and grind and groan, one side dipping to throw up a shower of sparks as it scraped against the dock, it rocked to a rickety stop only a few feet from the plank.

Hunk swung off the bike and opened his arms to Keith. “Need a lift?” Keith nodded, letting go of the handlebars. “Alley- _oop!_ ” He scooped Keith up and scuffled up the ramp, followed by Pidge and Lance dragging the huge old TV between them.

Shiro was there to help take Keith’s weight, though he withdrew his hand with a raised eyebrow when Lance tried to enlist his help with the TV next.  “Next time,” he said to Keith and Hunk, “maybe we should just keep the whole team together.” 

“Not a bad thought,” said Hunk weakly, kneeling down to help Keith sit against the wall.  “How’s it going, Coran?  What’d we miss?”

Coran waved a hand.  “Oh, not much, although we did pick up some lovely old Altean flatware from one of the swap shops for a huge discount, and Allura had to bargain for a brooch that looked just like her mother’s—oh, goodness me,” he muttered, as an entire fleet of space pirates screamed up the dock, engines revving.

Coran politely asked Allura if she would please initiate the launch sequence. The doors yawned shut.

Hunk gripped his forehead.

“We never even got the groceries!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hunk has the same priorities as I do, which is WHERE'S THE FOOD.


	5. A Pancake That Tastes Like Actual Pancake

It was the last quarter of the night cycle and Keith woke up thirsty.

He tried turning over and sticking a leg out from under the sheets, but after getting frustrated sweating and thrashing and staring at the clock he snatched his crutches from the corner and hobbled towards the kitchen for a glass of water.

Bursts of green light still leaked from underneath Pidge’s door, along with a string of beeps and one huge snore. She and Lance had fallen asleep with their working game console, insisting they had to beat Underground Adventure 1995 a second time so they could unlock the secret post-credits scene and beat Pidge's childhood speed record. Kid Pidge was apparently even better at games than Teen Pidge. 

What he didn’t expect to see were lights still on in the kitchen. And smoke. And the smell of something sweet and bready. And Hunk in a yellow apron, humming off-key as he whipped something in a bowl.

“Just crack the eggs and-- _whaa_!” Hunk dropped a stick of buttery-looking stuff as he turned around to see Keith in the doorway. Keith yelled a little too, just because it seemed like the thing to do, only to try and turn it into an embarrassed cough.

“Whew! Sorry, man! You startled me!” Hunk pushed the bowl to the side. “What’re you doing up?” 

“I got thirsty. I think the question is, what are _you_ doing--wait. Are those… pancakes?”

Too late, Hunk sidled sideways to try and hide the stove from view. “No! … Yes? They were supposed to be a surprise.”

“Where’d you even get the stuff?”

Hunk rubbed the back of his neck. “I, uh, asked Coran to go pick up some things if I dropped him off with Yellow. He’s not on any of the wanted lists. And he gets all the good discounts."

Keith tilted his head. “You stayed up all night to… make me pancakes?”

“Yeah. I promised you pancakes and now we’re gonna have pancakes.” Hunk flipped the fridge door open with his foot and took out a pitcher of some frothy purple stuff, which he poured in a tall glass. “Here. Sit down.” He pushed a stool over. “Look, freshly squeezed globefruit juice!”

Keith took a sip. It was a little tart, but smooth. “It’s good,” he said, eyebrows raising.

“Tastes like space pirates getting whacked in the face,” said Hunk with a grin as he took the skillet off the stove and tried to flip a pancake over in the air.

He made it, but some of the batter splattered, speckling Keith’s cheek and the back of his hand. “Whoops!”

Keith grabbed a pinch of flour from a half-open bag and threw it at Hunk’s apron. Hunk burst into surprised laughter, resting a hand on Keith’s shoulder, which shook from his own gusts of laughter. He felt too warm, even though he was on the opposite side of the kitchen from the stove. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Nah, I wanted to thank you for everything yesterday. If it wasn’t for you poor Yellow’s bayard probably would’ve been lost forever. You really did me a solid.”

“You helped. I… had fun. We always make a good team together.”

Hunk turned the color of freshly squeezed globefruit juice as he set a plate of pancakes in front of Keith. There was even some kind of cinnamon-like sweet stuff on the top.  They ate in silence for a few minutes, a hot flush creeping up the back of Keith’s neck. 

He should just do it. Maybe talking to the guy you liked was like swordfighting a lion-shark mob boss. You just had to aim right for the neck and maybe sprain your ankle in the process.

“Um, so uh,” he said, wringing his arm, “who was the guy?”

Hunk blinked. “Huh? Sorry, what?” 

“The guy who never guessed you liked him.” Hunk stared. An empty silence yawned like the black void of space.  Keith coughed again. “ _Wasitme?”_

 _“_ Uhhhhhhhhhhh,” said Hunk. “Uhhhhhhhhhhhyes.”

Keith felt like a little like when he slammed Red’s accelerator to max in the middle of a space fight and then kept pushing even though it wouldn’t go any faster. “I’m sorry I didn’t notice. I’m... not an observant person.”

“Well, you managed one good guess right about now,” said Hunk, still clutching the pancake flipper.

“They’re different things,” said Keith with a frustrated shrug. “I’m not good at… stuff.”

“Haha, that’s okay, man,” said Hunk with a little laugh. “We’re friends now, aren’t we?” 

“Yeah! And I like it when you hug me and when you make me pancakes, and how you make me laugh. It, uh... makes me feel warm inside.” Was this supposed to be how you confessed to your crush? He had no idea, and for once he didn’t particularly care whether he had no idea. It was happening anyway. Keep the accelerator on max.

The pancake flipper was starting to slide out of Hunk’s hand.

“So, I guess what I’m trying to say is… do you wanna… come play a co-op game with me?”

Hunk dropped the flipper. “Sorry, that wasn’t quite what I was expecting. But I can dig it! That’s what I like about you. That you surprise me all the time, but like, in a nice way.”

Hunk picked up the spatula with a bashful smile, playing with his headband. Keith was probably making a face. He didn’t know what kind, but he hoped it was a good one.

“So what’s the game?”

“ _Star Dragon 2: Scaly Pals.”_ Hunk kept a straight face. “Pidge told me I could borrow it. It was my favorite game as a kid. I used to play it with my foster brother all the time.” Keith held up his fork. “You have to promise not to laugh at it.” 

Hunk considered. “What if I laugh at the funny parts but not in a mean way?”

Keith nodded. “That is allowed.”

“What if I make jokes about _us_ while we play it?”

Keith raised a finger. “That is also allowed.”

Hunk squeezed the spatula.  “Could there maybe be cuddling involved?”

Keith almost choked on his pancake.  “Yeah.  That’s recommended.”

“Sweet! So what are we waiting for!” Hunk bustled back to the stove. “Oh, but the pancakes! What am I saying, we can take them with us! And then we’ll need to go get the TV from Pidge’s room… and we're gonna need blankets. We're gonna be so cozy. Maximum coziness."

“Don’t carry too much.” Keith struggled upright from the stool. “I still need your reassuring bulk.” 

Hunk’s face broke into a huge grin as he swept Keith off the stool. “You got it, man!” And together they hobbled up the hallway, pancakes in hand. A pancake flopped off the stack and onto the floor.

Neither of them cared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wholesome boys warm and soft like mash potato
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I hope y'all enjoyed!

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for stopping by! I hope y'all come back for the next installment!


End file.
